Leveling is the positioning of a plane of an object perpendicular to the gravitational axis of the earth; whereas a plane is plumb when it is parallel to the earth's gravitational axis. For example, in a household setting, people typically prefer to level pictures, mirrors, and other framed objects so that these objects are parallel to the floor, ceiling and walls of a house, which are presumed to be level themselves. In a construction setting, numerous structural elements must be leveled to satisfy building codes and esthetic preferences. For example, as discussed above, leveling of framed objects requires that structures of a home be themselves level, which must be done during construction. Additionally, leveling may be important when working with tools so that cuts, holes or other modifications of a work-piece are correctly made.
Positioning may include the placement of an object, which may include its position in three dimensional space, or a rotational orientation. In some situations, positioning may include leveling. An example of positioning may include locating an object a certain distance from another object, orienting an object toward a compass point, locating the object a certain distance from sea level or ground level, and the like.
Various devices and methods can be used to level or position an object or work-tool. One exemplary leveling device is a bubble or spirit level, which is a transparent and slightly curved vial that is incompletely filled with liquid. A bubble in this vial settles to the center of the vial when the vial is level.
While this is a typical device used to level or plumb objects, it is deficient because a user must be able to see the position of the bubble in order to properly use the instrument, and being at a distance, at certain angles, and having an obstructed view makes bubble levels unusable. Unfortunately, this substantially limits the use of such a device in many settings.
Although some work-tools may include a level, work-tools do not typically allow for robust positioning work-data to be generated and used because such functionalities would be prohibitively expensive to be included in numerous work-tools. However, workers may benefit from real-time positioning data and an easily visible graphical representation of such positioning data when using a plurality of work-tools.